.
Kangerlussuaq Hotel
and Conference Centre
Greenland

The Past as an American Base


Direct flights to/from Ottawa, Copenhagen and Reykjavik



Only Greenland has a modern conference centre with an international airport in its back garden.

You notice the silence the moment you set foot on the asphalt at Kangerlussuaq Airport. The heavens are so high above that the noise from a modern airport seems to disappear into thin air. And as soon as the luggage wagons have trundled away, all you can hear is Greenland. The call of a bird. A breath of cool air from the inland ice. The click of a camera.

Top of page The past as an American Airbase

Things were rather different when the area was still the vast American Bluie West Eight base.

For half a century, beginning in 1941, the few travellers who arrived here were met by the bustle of massive military activity. First there was convoy protection during the Second World War, then the constant airborne surveillance of the cold war.

Countless American soldiers did their military service at Sondre Strom. "A nice place to live" if we are to believe the Base Commander's Order of the Day. In any event, certainly not a boring place according to the countless authentic accounts of encounters with musk oxen, parties in the officers' mess and survival exercises on open terrain.

Once the base commander's office - now part of the museum

The American soldiers have now left Kangerlussuaq, but the base remains. It has been transformed by the Greenland Airports Authority into a modern training and conference centre. Not five-star luxury, but an efficient hotel in which the fragrance of military webbing lingers on and the tramp of general issue boots still echoes around the corner.

The interior can be best described as genuine American 1960s functionalism. The bathrooms and toilets have been fully modernised, though there are still a few rooms that have yet to be equipped with en suite facilities.
But when you're speeding across the ice in 15 degrees of frost on a husky sledge, or fishing in the fjord on a hot summer's day, you will discover that there is much more to life than hotel furnishings .





Top of page
Kangerlussuaq Hotel and Conference Centre
P.O. Box 1006
DK-3910 Kangerlussuaq
Greenland
Tel.: 002 99 11 300
Fax: 002 99 11 440
kangerlussuaq.airport@greennet.gl

When calling from abroad, please note
the time difference to Greenland




KANGERLUSSUAQ HOTEL AND CONGRESS CENTER
The Past as an American Base - Facilities of the Congress Centre - Excursions and Recreation
Address and e-mail - Next Page


Kangerlussuaq Homepage



Navigate Greenland Guide

That's right - just click



© Copyright Greenland Guide & Kangerlussuaq Airport
http://www.greenland-guide.dk